Circles
by casfics
Summary: Is it ever too late to save things with the person you should have never let go? Ethan/Alicia one-shot, AU of the ending S33Ep8.


_Second Chances_

 _The path from you extending,_

 _I could not see its course—_

 _or the closer to you I was getting,_

 _the further from you I'd walked_

 _For I was moving in a circle,_

 _not a line as I had thought—_

 _the steps I took away from you,_

 _were taking me towards._

 _~Rupi Kaur_

 _-x-_

Taking a last, lazy slug from the wine glass, Ethan lolls his head back into the threadbare armchair. Momentarily he remembers himself and squirms; germs will be festering underneath the fading cotton and it's his fast-track ticket to an unpleasant disease. Of course, she'd clout him over the head with the (equally worn) cushion and tell him to get a grip, because his job requires him to mix with the sick all the time yet he's phased by a 'vintage' item of furniture taken from a perfectly nice charity shop, and that there's nothing wrong with decorating your new home on the cheap. But, luckily for him, she's barely conscious to challenge his unease. The reason his thighs are cramping up is the very same reason that saves him: she is finally peaceful on his knee.

'Twelve times,' Alicia mumbles under her breath.

'Hm?'

'The amount of times you have sighed in the past five minutes,' she explains. 'Anyone would think you aren't happy right now.'

'Remind me why you're counting?'

'Pretty hard to ignore when you sound like the weight of the world is troubling you. Seriously, what's the matter?'

His hand moves to her back automatically. 'Sighs of contentment exist.'

'Ethan, it's not that, and I'm hardly an idiot,' she persists, shuffling upwards and locking eyes with him. 'You think I was born yesterday.'

Without stopping himself, he lets out another throaty sigh. He wouldn't know what to say anyway for fear of plunging them back into awkwardness. And his only real choice is to avert his eyes back to the screen. Bad music filters from the MTV channel, some 80s playlist that she whacked on soberly to diffuse any awkwardness. Alas, it failed miserably, but it's a feeble distraction more than he would have otherwise had. Somewhere else to direct his gaze as opposed to looking, once again, like the lovesick schoolboy who doesn't have a handle on his feelings.

'Fine,' she raises her eyebrows and shakes her head bizarrely. 'I wish you'd let me in rather than bearing the brunt of whatever this is all by yourself. Never know, I _might_ even understand.'

He wonders if she knows and idly watches out the corner of his eye as she flicks off the TV. Risking it is something he's not willing to do — not when she is so fragile and there is so much on the line. The wind howls outside and, as a sudden replacement for his chest, she lowers her head against the arm of the chair and her eyelids flutter shut.

'Alicia, if this is—'

'If this is what?'

'It's just, _come on,_ you know what you're doing. I sigh all the time and it has never bothered you before. Nothing has changed, nothing is different—'

He breaks himself off and falls back into silence. It is alarmingly obvious that he's lying, lying to them both, _for_ them both, and neither is fooled by his bid to smooth out the creases. Everything has changed, seemingly irreversibly so. Declaring the converse has only served to make him feel even worse about it, because really, it's his fault things are the way they are. Despite her multiple efforts to rid him of the guilt, her reassurance that everything happens for a reason, he'll always have it deep down. As long as things are like this, he can't move past it.

The only consolation to be taken for either of them is that they are not alone. At least, not physically. Warm and heavy, the weight of her is a beacon of light, they're together despite the distance. Ethan opens his mouth and shuts it a few times. And, although she doesn't do so much as glance at him, she probably knows he's doing it.

 _She always did know every little quirk._

He bitterly wishes he wasn't a nervous wreck. This woman has seen him laugh until milkshake spouted from his nose, watched as he yelled until he was purple and the walls trembled, listened to his darkest thoughts, caught the spiders with her own bare hands (when he was indignant they couldn't possibly hoover them up), has been violently sick on his shoes, sobbed on his shoulder, witnessed his worst nightmares and traced every inch of his body with her thumb alone. Nothing feels more harrowing than knowing she's there and feeling the tug, yet they are little more than strangers now. Besides, she's harder now, but certainly no more Hardy, and the air of indestructibility surrounding her is completely foreign to him.

Two more seconds pass as he mulls this over, and there's movement, she's propping herself up, pulling at fabric gently, peeling back a corner of his dressing gown, placing a palm on his chest.

'I know what's the matter,' she says gently. 'I just wanted you to say so.'

He stays silent this time but manages to hold her eyes. They are a darker shade of blue than usual, and her accent is weighty, words slurred, down to fatigue more than alcohol.

'What more could I possibly say?'

'We are on the same page, Ethan, even when you don't think so. I promise you. Um, think of it as like... Santa Claus.'

He chuckles. 'Like Santa?'

'Yeah. When I was 8, all my friends in junior school were getting to the age where they stopped believing. Tragic, really, when you think about how young that is. My mam was horrified. I was her baby, and my dad was worried that his Scooby was losing her innocence and going to miss out on the magic that makes Christmas so special.'

He listens thoughtfully, wondering if the logical version he knows of her is a new thing. It's a comforting thought to think she believed in anything and everything as a child, because so did he. And somewhere, in a parallel universe, maybe they'd have got on well.

'Right, so you're saying that the page we're on doesn't exist?'

She laughs then, appreciating the irony. 'For such a brainy human being, you really do stagger me, Ethan Hardy.'

'Well! You do tell half a tale, forget your train of thought and go off on a tangent every time, keeping up with you is no mean feat,' he smiles. 'I'm imagining the sentiment behind this is something along the lines of fairytales—'

'Wrong, actually,' she says. 'But I feel silly now.'

'Just spit it out. I told you the Nibbles story when we were barely acquainted and I was half-naked, way out my depth and trying to impress you.'

'Would you look at that! What's the difference?' Alicia fires back, a smile teasing its way across her features as he turns red.

She clears her throat after a while, letting the mood shift into something more serious than they were both anticipating.

'You don't have to see something to have faith in it,' she says softly. 'Sometimes just knowing it's there is more than enough.'

For once, her deep thinking resonates with him, but suddenly he remembers she's beyond tired and he feels like a fizzled-out firework himself. If only he'd stayed shtum after their last drink, perhaps she would have dozed off, and they would have stayed like that the entire night without entering the realm of no returns. Pins and needles, hair tickling his face, rosy cheeks, the smell of stale booze and all the glory — he'd trade their current, treacherous situation in a heartbeat for the mundanity yet cosiness of their old life. Accidents happen, though, don't they? That's what he tells himself. And that's what these past few months have been: a motorway pile up of accidents. Putting her on the back burner, _an accident_. Going round with the most expensive bottle of Sauvignon Blanc he could find in the supermarket, _an accident._ Wearing his shirt with the cufflinks from that night, _an accident._

Wordlessly, Alicia's lips find their way to the base of his neck. His best friend could never be an accident.


End file.
